The myth of heterosexual AIDS

Well, it's official: outside of Africa, heterosexual AIDS is a myth. That is, the idea that it's a general threat to the hetero population is nonsense, says the World Health Organization. If you are not a gay male, a drug user, or a skeezo who frequents prostitutes, you're pretty much not going to get AIDS.

From the story:

The biggest puzzle was what had caused heterosexual spread of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa – with infection rates exceeding 40 per cent of adults in Swaziland, the worst-affected country – but nowhere else.

"It is the question we are asked most often – why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships."

"Sexual behaviour is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships creating sexual networks that, from an epidemiological point of view, are more efficient at spreading infection."

So, maybe heterosexuals in African culture have a lot more sex than heterosexuals in other cultures? A lot more reckless sex, that is? Non-monogamous sex?

More:

But the factors driving HIV were still not fully understood, he said.

"The impact of HIV is so heterogeneous. In the US , the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate. That is in one country. How do you explain such differences?"

Maybe the heteros who live in Washington, DC, have a lot more reckless, non-monogamous sex than the heteros who live in North Dakota? In other words, culture has consequences.